Unable to Charge Lithium Batteries

[Harry Brown]

Hi,

I have a new boat to me with a Lithium Battery setup. I am own my own with this one regarding getting to know the system (no handover available apart from a few scraps of paper left on the boat!), therefore looking for some guidance please.
I cannot work out how to charge the system when I want it to. It appears to be programmed to charge at certain times and I have yet to manage to work out its schedule. Before I took the boat out for the first time the charger seemed to charge during the night keeping at approx. 85% SOC, all was fine.
I took the boat out for the first time for 2 nights on anchor, when the SOC got down to ~50%, I thought I would put the generator on to charge the batteries.
They did not charge. The Victron Colour Control showed the Quattro 24/5000 in “Passthru” even though the generator was on.
So the next day I returned to port and plugged in the shore power. Yet again the Quattro show passthru and did not charge the batteries, currently at ~45%SOC. The boat has now been connected to shore power for +24hrs, with no sign of any charging and SOC still at ~45%.


The system is as follows:
8 x 400ah Winston cells with nominal 3.2V in series for 24V bank.
123SmartBMS battery management System
123SmartBMS extended Module
123SmartBMS smart relay (dual bistable relay)
Victron BP-200i
Victron Quattro Colour Control
Victron BMV-702 monitor
Solar panels are charging batteries through a blue solar charge controller.

So to me this is all a bit foreign! I am use to my old lead acid bank where I started the generator or connected shore power and the Quattro automatically started charging to 100%
So, can you please tell me how do I charge these batteries to 80%-90% SOC on demand, i.e to fully charge before leaving port and taking on a trip?

Many thanks for all replies, or any further questions to resolve.
Regards.

[GordMay]

Do you have the ‘Manual’?
➥ https://www.victronenergy.com/upload...2%20-%20EN.pdf

[Flod]

The 123bms control the relay and both the charge and load bus. If you go into the app there is settings (cell voltages, cell temp, soc etc) for when charging is allowed. If you are outside these parameters then the charging relay is off if correctly connected . More info can be found here: https://www.ev-power.eu/Battery-Mana...tooth-4-0.html

There can also be a manual override installed somewhere in the system. I have that. It’s a simple switch that allows me to shut off charging at anytime overriding the bms. You need to look at how things are connected and figure it out. Or post photos here.

[john61ct]

Yes it is actually a very important feature to be able to completly shut down any parasitic draw in storage, ideally physically isolate the BMS from the cells completely.

[Harry Brown]

Thank you very much for replies so far.
I have located two physical switches that I believe shuts off the charging as you suggest, (one marked Alternator the other Quattro) but I assume this does not help me charge on demand just stop charging cycle?
I have also found out that the BMS is using the Quattro AUX I/O to activate the charging cycle which I confirmed by shorting this out on the quattro and it began charging the bank.
I then downloaded the 123SmartBMS Extended Module program and plugged it in via USB to my laptop to try and gain access.
The problem I am having is the program shows that the intercell and BMS are communicating but does not show any of the existing settings. I'm getting a "Failed to get or set settings" message. (see screen shots)
I also can't interact with the configurable relay tab, when I click on the down arrow for relay 1 for example, and click Hysteresis the program freezes and then crashes and shuts down.

So, I think i'm nearly there aren't I? Just need to somehow display the existing settings in the BMS Extended Module and then adjust the settings when I can see them, or am I going to have to reprogram completely, in which case I don't know the last users parameters??

Many thanks for your help in advance.
Regards.

[Flod]

Have you tried connecting via bluetooth with the app? This is how I do it. 123SmartBMS av Albertronic B.V. https://apps.apple.com/se/app/123smartbms/id988285264

[Harry Brown]

I have, the android version, but it doesn't allow any interaction, just viewing.
Screen shots below.

[Flod]

Strange, in the iPhone app you can change most of the values (the rest are set with the small switches on the bms circuit boards) anyway the settings look ok to me, they basically means that the dual relay will cut charging when any cell get over 3,40v or 65 C. The soc will be set equal to 100% at the same time. Then the relay will open again when the soc is down to 95%. The manual explains all this: https://files.ev-power.eu/inc/_doc/a...S123-Smart.pdf

On a second look I see that the “battery capacity “ is set wrong (this is used for soc % calculations) it shows 0,1 kWh but you stated that you have 8x400ah so you should set this value to 75% of 10240wh which is 7,68 kWh this you should be able to change in the app